


Eye of the Storm (part one, Absinthe)

by BespokeAffinity



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Evil Authors Day!, Madness, Mental Health Issues, Sisterly Love, Sisters, Young Andromeda Black Tonks, Young Bellatrix, Young Bellatrix Black Lestrange, Young Narcissa Black Malfoy, mwah!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:56:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29478063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BespokeAffinity/pseuds/BespokeAffinity
Summary: Once there were three sisters who shared everything.  Alas -- no matter how valiant the soul, the human condition is inherently flawed, and even Love cannot cure all.  Here begins the tale of the sisters Black -- three witches who, inseparable in childhood, grow up to choose lives as far apart from each other as possible.A lovesong for all of those we've loved and for whom we've cried due to mental health issues.Posted for Evil Authors Day 2021.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Eye of the Storm (part one, Absinthe)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CoquetteKitten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoquetteKitten/gifts).



> Mes amis, here is something I wrote several years back. I've always wanted to post something for EAD, yet have always felt that a work shouldn't be published unless a finished product was intended. This has been lost in the cloud for a while, but I'm not inclined to work on it just now. It was always meant to be a series of short chapters chronicling the descent into madness of Bellatrix Lestrange. The finished doc was/is to be called 'Absinthe'. Gifted to CK for her saintly patience with my slow and obsessive writing habits.
> 
> A lovesong for all of those whom we've loved and cried for due to mental health issues.

_ The characters and canon situations in the following story belong solely to JK Rowling, Scholastic, and WB. I am not making any money from the publishing or writing of this story.  _

Alpha reader and final beta: CoquetteKitten

_ Spring 1969 _

_ Cygnus Black III Residence _

  
  


Bellatrix Black sprawled along one of the nursery window seats, bored and gnawing her nails to the quick as her sisters went through the spring fashion catalogues by candlelight on a nearby settee. Summer holiday had only just begun, and the two of them weren’t wasting any time in preparing for the soirees that marked its rapid progression.

“May I help pick out your dress for your engagement party, ‘Bella?” begged Narcissa, youngest of the Black sisters.

She stared out into the inky night sky as rain pelted the window pane. “May I rip out all your pretty little teeth and string them into a necklace, ‘ _ Cissa _ ?” she countered in a sweet tone. A furious wind tore at the shutters, lightning arced across the sky, and deafening thunder shook the old house, but Bellatrix would gladly have sat outside in the midst of it all if it meant escape from their current incarceration.

Narcissa tried again. “Oh, please let me help! You don’t even care what you wear.” The candelabrum on the nearest table guttered in a particularly strong draft, but her eyes remained glued to her catalogue. “Mother won’t be pleased if-”

The violent weather was stirring up something old and wild in Bellatrix’s bones; she felt its angry restlessness as if it were her own. “Mother has no power over me.” Springing up, she began pacing the length of the low-roofed attic room. “And if you insist on blathering like an idiot, and I’m forced to kill you,  _ Father _ will understand.” 

“Well, I think  _ this _ one would look lovely on you. Just look at all the silver buttons!” 

It was either familiarity or idiocy that made fourteen-year-old Narcissa so oblivious to her eldest sister’s fits of temper; Bellatrix suspected the latter. She’d have hexed the daylights out of her but for Andromeda’s warning glance.

“No magic during the meeting,” she said reprovingly. “Remember?”

Bellatrix scowled and took a pen knife from her pocket, which she used to disembowel the nearest thing: a moth-eaten rocking horse. 

Her sisters, having seen the like many times, went back to their catalogues. Andromeda had the decency to look resigned to the task, but Narcissa, proper little future wifey that she was, was actually  _ enjoying _ herself. “I want this one, but in blue.” She tapped a manicured finger on the glossy page before her with typical decisiveness. “It would be perfect for the Malfoy’s annual gala.”

Bellatrix pretended to wretch, much to Andromeda’s amusement. Narcissa’s skill in decision making, while impressive, was counterbalanced by an inexplicable and nauseating fixation with the gutless Malfoy heir. “You know what they say about wizards who dress  _ that _ well, ‘Ciss.” She gave a meaningful wiggle of her eyebrows and then, catching sight of the dress her sister liked, added, “That’s absolutely hideous.”

Had Narcissa Black been a cat, her ears would have flattened back at remark; as it was, her eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. “ _ That _ ,” she hissed, “is  _ couture _ .”

“Salazar protect us all; you two might just be made for each other.”

Andromeda snorted with laughter, and for one long, happy minute Bellatrix triumphed over the thing lurking in her veins. She giggled and pounced on ‘Cissa, tickling her without mercy. Forgotten was the weather, her captivity, and its reason.

Then a bolt of lightning hit a tree just outside, and the corresponding thunder was so overwhelming she clapped her hands to her ears and howled in agony. “Oh,  _ why _ has he locked us in this wretched place!”

“You  _ know _ why,” Andromeda murmured as Bellatrix shook her head savagely in an attempt to clear it. At sixteen, ‘Dromeda was the most level-headed of the three, and she rarely failed to soothe her elder sister’s strops.

But the wildness within had already reclaimed control of Bellatrix, spiking her pulse and crawling along her spine. “I’m  _ not _ mad,” she fumed. She twirled her wand between shaking fingers, willing its familiar shape and form to calm her nerves. “Besides, I’m eighteen! He has no ri-” Suddenly her brain caught up with her mouth, and she choked mid-sentence, realizing how close she’d come to treason.

One did not question Father – not even Bellatrix, his first and favorite –especially not on the first Sunday of the month, when the house was even now flooding with delegates of all the families who bowed low before the mysterious Dark Lord. She rubbed her recently mended collarbone as she remembered what, exactly, might happen if one  _ did _ . . .

Andromeda was regarding her with an expression somewhere between respect and horror. “It’s only the weather making you talk like that,” she said in a small but firm voice. “You’re not _really_ mad.”

A spoken affirmation of what she herself knew to be true was all it took for the words to come tumbling out. “It’s inside me, ‘Dromeda,” she whimpered, scratching at her forearms in an attempt to quell the storm’s creep, “just under my skin. Help me get it out.”

Narcissa shifted uncertainly and darted a glance first in Andromeda’s, then Bellatrix’s, direction. “Is it-”

Andromeda silenced her with a look before turning to Bellatrix. “Of course we’ll help.” She patted the space beside her on the settee. “But first, come sit and I’ll order a Calming Draught.” Then, in a quieter voice meant only for Narcissa, she added, “I don’t know.” But she never took her gaze from Bellatrix. “’Bella,  _ sit _ . You need a Draught.”

“It’s probably just the weather,” echoed Narcissa doubtfully. “I’ll get-”

_ No, no, no. _ Bellatrix obeyed Andromeda’s motherly order, but she wound her fingers into her unruly hair. “Calming Draughts at breakfast! Calming Draughts at lunch! Calming Draughts at dinner! Calming Draughts whenever I so much as blink! No! More! Calming! Draughts!” She punctuated each word with a vicious yank to her thick, dark curls, reveling in the fleeting clarity brought by the pain. “I’m done with them!”

Narcissa’s already pale complexion took on a sickly pallor. “You did take your dinner dose, didn’t you, ‘Bella? I’m  _ sure _ I saw you . . . ”

“I don’t want one!” she snapped. She clawed at her forearms. “I need to get this thing  _ out _ of me – not put it to sleep!” A desperate thought occurred to her, and she cast her eyes around the room. “A knife might do. Where’s my-”

“But the Healers ordered-”

Suddenly two strong arms wove around her torso, trapping her arms at her sides, and Andromeda’s voice sounded almost panicked as she barked, “For gods’s sake, ‘Cissa, shut up and Summon Dobby!”

Bellatrix bucked in fury, channeling the weather as she fought against Andromeda’s hold, but the middle Black sister was stronger – and made even more so by a determination that showed in her clenched jaw. 

She shrieked in anguish. “Peel back the skin from my bones – it can’t hide then!”

“Stop,” Andromeda muttered through gritted teeth. “’Bella, stop!” At some point she managed to get her legs wrapped around those of Bellatrix, and the two fell off the settee, fashion catalogues scattering around them with a sound like fat raindrops. 

“LET GO OF ME!” she roared, but she wasn’t speaking to her sister. The thunder was inside her skull now, and lightning flashed behind her tightly clenched eyelids; her body shook with the force of her internal maelstrom.

Andromeda’s grip became impossibly stronger. “I won’t let you go,” she growled.

Bellatrix’s unconscious response was to sink her teeth into her sister’s earlobe and bite down until her lips were wet with blood, but still Andromeda held fast.

At some point, as if she’d passed into the eye of the storm, a bright, eerie calm fell over Bellatrix’s awareness. So peaceful was it in contrast to the tempest she’d just endured, she ceased her struggle, breathing a ragged sigh of relief. Then the eye became an  _ eye _ ; it shifted and stared straight into her soul – and with a frisson of pure terror Bellatrix recognized the wild thing that had been hiding inside her for so long. She sobbed against her sister’s rigid neck. “If you won’t cut it out then please kill me, ‘Dromeda, if you love me.”

There was a  _ crack! _ of Apparition, and then a quaking House-elf was handing an oversized version of a familiar vial to Narcissa. She sank down beside her prone sisters, pulling their heads apart by a handful of Bellatrix’s hair, and when Bellatrix protested, used the opportunity to pour the potion into her open mouth.

The Calming Draught took effect quickly, and within seconds Andromeda was able to loosen her iron hold. She sat up and pulled Bellatrix into her arms as if she were a small child. “Don’t be daft.” Despite her calm tone, she looked shaken.

Bellatrix’s brain wasn’t rattling about in her head any more, nor was her skin crawling, but the wild thing was merely asleep, lulled into dormancy by a potion that lasted only a few hours at most. “One day I’ll hurt someone again.” Her tongue felt thick, and it was difficult to form words. “I’m an adult now; I’ll be sent to-”

“Nonsense.” Narcissa stroked Bellatrix’s cheek, but her eyes shifted sideways for a split second as she added, “We’ll always be here to take care of you, ‘Bella.” 

“You’re bleeding, ‘Dromeda,” Bellatrix noted with detachment as she licked her lips. “And I can taste blood. You see? I’ve already hurt someone else.”

“Yes, well – they can’t send you to Azkaban for biting your sister.”

The Calming Draught numbed Bellatrix’s mind and calmed her body, but it didn’t slow her thought processes. She sucked her lips clean. “I can taste your pain.” The idea made her giggle.

The storm outside was winding down; the thunder and lightning had passed, and the sound of the rain on the roof whispered false promises of peace and rest. “Keep me topped up, will you,” she murmured as she drifted off to sleep.


End file.
